WASHINGTON --
The Concord Coalition today released a new
Report on Fiscal Responsibility
entitled Deficits, Deception and Denial Rate a Failing Grade. This report
grades Congress and the Administration on the choices that they make – or fail
to make - in promoting fiscal responsibility and paving a long-term sustainable
path for entitlement spending.

“The first six months of the 108th Congress were the most fiscally irresponsible
in recent memory. The crux of the problem was a schizophrenic pursuit of small
government tax policies and big government spending initiatives,” said The
Concord Coalition.

“If fiscal discipline bent too far in the 107th Congress, it finally snapped in
the 108th. Policymakers need to stop the hemorrhage of red ink, face up to the
necessary trade-offs and negotiate a new balanced budget plan. Without restoring
such a firm goal, fiscal policy will continue its downward spiral.”

The following is a summary of Concord's Report on Fiscal Responsibility:

CATEGORY

GRADE

COMMENTS

Overall:

F

Current “fiscal
policy” is characterized by deficits, deception and denial. Three strikes
and you're out. It earns a failing grade.

Short-Term:
Enacting measures that maintain fiscal responsibility over the next 1-2
years

D

Fiscal year 2003 is
expected to end with a record deficit of more than $400 billion -- roughly
$600 billion excluding Social Security. More alarming than the growing
short-term deficit is policymakers' growing willingness to justify
deficits of this size as “moderate and manageable.” Complacency with a
deficit at 4 percent of GDP is an open invitation to even higher deficits.

Medium-Term:
Enacting measures that are fiscally responsible over the next 10 years

F

Coming on top of an
already problematic 10-year outlook, actions taken so far this year --
principally a major new tax cut and work on a Medicare prescription drug
benefit -- make a period of prolonged deficits almost certain. This goes a
step beyond deficits caused by understandable temporary factors. It is a
deliberate decision to risk deficits throughout the coming decade.
And it comes despite the fact that the only plan for dealing with the
fiscal pressure of the boomers' retirement in the following decade is to
run even bigger deficits.

Medicare and Social
Security already promise far more in future benefits than they can afford
to deliver. Washington's apparent remedy for the long-term fiscal
challenge is to add trillions more for a Medicare prescription drug
benefit, rally around the “Do Nothing” plan for Social Security and pile
even more fiscal burdens on the backs of future taxpayers by running up
the national debt.